Bios: A Growth Mindset School in a Fixed Mindset World

One of our now eleventh grade students raised his SAT scores 100 points to over 650 to the 84th percentile through the efforts of his math teacher, parents, and his hard work. This is in addition to the increase of his reading score on the SAT by 40 points - also over 650 to the 94th percentile. He is a hard working student who had been underachieving before he arrived this year. A large part of his success is due to the high effort put in by everybody towards his achievements. But, another factor played a role in this. His teacher and all the teachers at Bios work from a different mindset than most educational systems.

For most public and many private schools, students are already type cast into a fixed mindset as to their abilities. Think about it. There are special programs for “gifted,” “learning disabled,” and “mentally handicapped.” Even non-labeled students are type cast by not being placed in a special program but left in “regular education.” In this fixed mindset, you are less apt to take on challenges. Or as quoted in their book Switched by the Heath brothers, “. . . you fear that others will see your failure as an indication of your true ability and see you as a loser.” You don’t try really hard at your work because smart or talented people do not have to and you want people to perceive you as being one of them.

On a regular basis, we have families with students who come to us with stories of being called “idiot” by a teacher, parents who say a child isn’t very smart, or something like “My child will never go to college, but he is a nice kid.” This mindset continues even with positive comments like “You’re great at soccer.” Or “Look how smart you are.” It keeps the person in a fixed place.

Contrast the fixed mindset with a growth mindset. Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University coined both phrases and shows in her research that the growth mindset is necessary if you want to reach your full potential.

Back to the book Switched. Their writings on the success of one study by Dweck to see if the growth mindset would help junior high students improve in math. Quoting from the book, “The growth-mindset students were taught that the brain is like a muscle that can be developed with exercise – that with work, they could get smarter.” After all, Dweck told them “nobody laughs at babies and says how dumb they are because they can’t talk.” The study was a dramatic success showing that the “growth mindset can be taught and that it can change lives.”

While working as a teacher of learning disabled children in a public school, the director of the learning disabilities department was unhappy with me because I was “discharging” students from their learning disabilities class and label because of their successful “mainstreaming” work over time in a regular education class. The director’s claim was “once a special education student, always a special education student.” When I showed her published research which differed and the student’s achievements she reluctantly said yes to the switch in placement. A fixed mindset says you were born this way and this way you will always be.

A growth mindset is more than just telling a student “you’re not stupid” or “you are smart.” A growth mindset involves educating both teachers and students that acquiring skills requires hard work and time.

The teachers and students at Bios have been very successful with the growth mindset. Whether it is raising a new student’s underachieving scores a 100 points in math on the SAT or changing a parent’s and student’s perceptions from “nice but not going to college” to “you have so many opportunities ahead of you when you complete college.”

I will finish with one more quote from Switched on the potential of the growth mindset. “The growth mindset, then, is a buffer against defeatism. It reframes failure as a natural part of the change process. And that’s critical, because people will persevere only if they perceive falling down as learning rather than failing. We will struggle, we will fail, we will be knocked down – but throughout, we’ll get better and we’ll succeed in the end.”

At Bios Christian Academy, the growth mindset is a strong part of our culture which is observed through the actions of our students and teachers.